Ductal Carcinoma--But His Wings Over Me

Yesterday I took down our Christmas tree.

 

And I worshiped.

Only perhaps an hour earlier, I had received the phone call from the clinic in Denver where I'd gone last Friday for a biopsy. The results were already in, and the clinic was prompt to let me know.

It was not good news. But something was holding me steady. I had been shaky when I made the appointment, but when I heard the results, I was held steady. Ductal carcinoma.

Jonathan brought home roses and lilies for me. He arranged them quietly.

The cancer antigen blood tests had not showed it up. But after caring for Dad and getting through the memorial service, and my medical situation getting worse instead of better, I felt I should go through with a biopsy. 

This was the ornament that hung the highest, and I had to stand on a chair to reach it. There was something about this one that kept riveting my attention this year. 

"Mediator." 

"The mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus," kept coming to me. Jesus, my Way to God.

I took one last picture of the little lights on the tree, because how I do love lights! 

 

And then I slipped outside to just grab a quick picture of the sun's rays through the clouds--just for the sake of light.

But when I came back in and looked at the photo I'd just snapped, I saw Wings instead.

Maybe my imagination is overactive right now, but wings is what I saw--as if they were God's wings over me!

 

Something special happened to me last week on Thursday as I went to St. Francis Hospital complex to pick up a CD of the imaging done for me a couple months ago so I could take it to the clinic in Denver where I was to get the biopsy the next day.  Just as I was nearing the door, a lady came out whom I thought I recognized. It was obvious that she also recognized me, and she came over and asked how I was doing and gave me a big hug. She was actually a lady who used to attend the church way up in Denver when we used to attend up there some. She and her husband have moved down to this area and of all times to meet again there by St. Francis hospital--90 miles and two years later. To me it felt like she was an angel with a little hug from God in the middle of this uncertain time.

I left one ornament out for a bit after packing the others in the bag.
Because my God is a "Mighty God."

He is an awesome God. 

And He is bigger than ductal carcinoma.

Jesus Is My Christmas Tree

Our Christmas tree has never been up this long before. If you'll promise not to tell anyone, it is still up, and it's already January 15th.

I have been about to take it down more than once, and thought I'd let someone else do it. Or wait until a certain day--which came and went. And every day someone plugs the lights in first thing in the morning, and all day long it cheers our rather bare livingroom (with most of our decor still packed up to move).

And then we would think about how the red and white prettiness and the lights and the names of Jesus would be gone.

And after the sad things happening in the last couple months, we just hung on to the lights and the beauty.

The children used the Christmas tree for a backdrop for advertising their puppies.

I kept looking at the names of Jesus on the ornaments, kept thinking about their meanings to me personally.

But the needles inside are becoming brown and we all know it's time to let go of the tree, to take it outside and cut it up and burn it, probably in our woodstove.

I am trying to think how to keep some of the lights going somewhere in our house.

Because I am the kind of person who needs lights. 

I need sunshine and windows and twinkling stars. 

But most of all, I need the Light of the World. 

And that is what gives me courage to let go of our pretty Christmas tree this year. I could have let go a couple weeks ago; it just didn't get done. But my heart is not set on this tree or on the lights or the ornaments.

My heart is set on Jesus.

And because of that, I can say goodbye to the twinkling lights and the red and black buffalo plaid bows on the Names of Jesus ornaments.

We will pack up the ornaments and unwind the tinsel and lights.

We will chop the tree in pieces and burn it in our woodstove. 

Because, I realized this week, Jesus is my Christmas Tree. 

He will always be there with His gentle and cheering light.

He awes me with His beauty and glory.

And for whatever I need, He is there--with one of His many, many names that characterize Him. 

Jesus, my Light and my glory, will always be with me! 

If You Only Had Three Books...Reading to the Next Generation

"If we could only have three books," my family often discussed as we were growing up, "what would they be?"

And we decided they would be the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, and a Methodist hymnal! 

 Those are the three books we displayed on the memory table after my dad's memorial service.

But all at the same time, my mother spent her life making sure we had many, many other good books to read as well. 

Every birthday, her children, grand children, and great grands get a good book that she has found at a library sale or yard sale, or on rare occasions ordered by mail or the internet.

 Our own family has had a habit of reading out loud in the evenings. We have seasons where we haven't, as the children have grown older, but this Christmas I gave the children good books I'd ordered from Christian Aid Ministries, and Jonathan read one of them out loud that very afternoon, which happened to be Christmas Sunday this year.

It was called Angel Wolf, the true story of how a Christian who had been imprisoned in Siberia for his faith and later taken out and left to die

was rescued by a white wolf.  The white wolf appeared to be an angle in disguise.

Lest I give away the story, I will let my readers order their own copies. Highly recommend this book! It is just $9.95.

Now I am reading out loud (whenever my voice allows me after our prolonged illnesses) Kidnapped in Haiti! It is the true story of the 17 Mennonite missionaries kidnapped in Haiti just a little over a year ago.  What a story! Definitely worth the purchase to read.

For my boys who like adventure I purchased Inferno, the story of a forest fire in Texas, (got that one specially for firefighter Sam). Christian Aid Ministries comes on the heels of such disasters and finds people to help. 

who has fought more fires in the last few weeks than in his last few years as volunteer firemen.

He was the one to transfer the body bag to a vehicle at this fire a few weeks ago. 

And Danny has already finished the book I got for him and Tim, Shatterproof, the stories of three deadly tornadoes where Christian Aid Ministries came upon the heels of to help victims. This book includes the Joplin tornado.  Amazing details!

For others in the family I got Blue Christmas (stories from a Mennonite Clinic during the cholera epidemic in Haiti) and True Angel Stories (a collection of true stories of when angels were seen by children or people or when people were helped by someone who appeared later to have been an angel). I just started to read a few of those stories. So interesting!

One story describes a young person who was reluctant and slow to join in a prayer time for a spiritual battle situation. He saw angels rising out of the roof to go help in the situation being prayed for, but his angel rose and flew last and later than the others, due to his pokiness and hesitancy. A real eye-opener into the real world of spiritual warfare when we fail to pray as we should.

Dad's Death Certificate Occupation--"Musician"!

At Dad's memorial service, there was lots of music--

beginning with an impromptu practice of a family song in the basement before the service!

The prelude included  Dorcas's organ music and Susanna's keyboard.

"Softly and Tenderly"

"Children of the Heavenly Father"

"Abide With Me"

"Precious Lord, Take My Hand"

"Great Is Thy Faithfulness" 

During the service, a number of the clan sang "We Shall See His Lovely Face."

 And my brother Elon had asked Dorcas and me to sing "Whispering Hope," which he remembered was one of Dad's favorites, a duet that Dorcas and I used to sing together, it must have been about 40 years ago! It was such a privilege to sing that together once again, when so many miles have separated Dorcas and me over the last 30 years.

Several ladies and girls of the clan accompanied Dorcas and me on the choruses of "Whispering Hope." 

When Elon gave the message near the end of the memorial service, he told us something most of the family didn't know.

He told how when he and Mom were at the mortuary while the mortician was filling out the death certificate, one of the questions was about Dad's occupation.

Neither Mom nor Elon knew what to put down. There was not room for all the occupations Dad had held in his life.

Newspaper boy for ten years.

Airman First Class in the Air Force for four years.

College student for several years.

Teacher.

Wall paper hanger.

Businessman.

Spent at least fifteen years involved in the Morley Family Singers and Handbell Choir--

"Ah!" said the mortician, as they discussed this question and how Dad had led the Morley Family Singers and Handbell Choir.

"Musician!" 

Somehow, that worked as well as anything else, all three of them rather helplessly decided.

Even if it did seem a little funny!

So Musician it was--Dad's occupation as stated on the death certificate!

I for one nearly laughed out loud.

Dad-a man who could hardly carry a tune in a bucket, though he managed to carry the base pretty well in our family songs if we practiced a lot and if he had someone to follow such as one of the boys.

Dad--the man who couldn't read music and had to have Mom write out words and dashes for his bell music and then circle his bell notes in different colors so he would know when to play.

"I don't know how to do music right," Dad would say, "But I can tell when someone else isn't doing it right!"

But there was a sense in which he was a musician.

He insisted that we children learn music, learn to play instruments, memorize hymns and songs, and then take the music and use it for the glory of God. 

He was the one who insisted that we make a number of recordings--such as the records above which I found in a drawer at Mom's place--two of our earliest recordings.  

We are still into music. 

Hours after Dad died, the following Sunday morning, most of his children if not all, were in church services all over the United States--singing in congregationals or choir numbers. Not one stayed home that day. It was Dad's habit to always have us in church on Sunday morning, and there we were.

And in the next few weeks, his children were singing everywhere from Pennsylvania to Mexico.

Grandchildren were on the piano or guitar or bells or harp.

 "Shall the dead arise and praise You?" the Psalmist asked in Psalm 88. "Will You work wonders for the dead? Shall Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or Your faithfulness in the place of destruction?"The obvious answer is no. 

 

But then the next Psalm goes on, "I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever; with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations."

That was one of the first Scripture choruses I remember my mom and dad teaching us as we children grew up. 

It describes a determination to sing-- "I will sing."

what to sing about--His mercies;

 who will sing--me; 

and to whom we will make known His mercies and and for how long--to all generations..

 It is the duty of the parents and grandparents to pass on to their children the stories of the faithfulness of God--to each generation following. That is now my solemn duty. 

It is not to pass on the faithfulness of my dad, because my dad failed sometimes.

But to pass on the faithfulness of our God. 

We are now the musicians who are passing on the baton of godly music and godly themes for our songs--

especially the theme of our faithful God.

He alone is worthy of our praise!

Digging Out from the Blizzard

Friday night after the three-four day blizzard, this is how much of our flatbed trailer we could see.

Snow was heaped under, around, and over it.   

And here is how the snow was heaped up in front of the garage doors of the parsonage where we'd been holed up most of the week. 

But the sun was rising and the storm was over, and Jonathan was determined to dig out and start for home in Colorado by that afternoon.

He and the boys shoveled as if their lives depended on it! 

They had some moments of despair as the truck could not pull the trailer out, even after much digging.

After a couple hours of work, they got the trailer dug out enough to pull it out of the major drift it was in. Beyond the trailer, drifts were covering bushes perhaps 7 or more feet deep.

Out in the blizzard, we found out later, people were dying. One died because of not being able to get to dialysis, and a child died from asthma because emergency workers couldn't get there in time. 

As my guys were digging out our flatbed trailer Saturday morning, fire chief Keith Lavery stopped to ask if they could come and help rescue someone and help dig out a stuck ambulance. So they got in on some excitement!   

Here is what the street looked like in Mission on our way to the mission headquarters.

Snow has drifted halfway up the church door, and even deeper at the corner. Keith's big pickup truck is virtually buried just beyond the church.

Here is just one scene we passed with semis frozen into the side of the road. At the mission office where rescue workers were being fed, we heard a rescue worker say that emergency workers broke two or three chains trying to pull some of the semis out.

 

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It was impossible to capture on camera the extent of the snow and drifts as we drove carefully on icepacked roads down from Mission, SD, through Nebraska. 

Just heaps and heaps of snow.  

And yet, it was also a winter wonderland! 

But we were so glad to be home!